The top 10 ways to monetize your blogs and start making your first income online
Making money online can be challenging and intimidating for some people because for some people who are just getting started, they have no clue about what to do.
If you want to make a passive income online as a side job, then you might want to try blogging.
By creating a blog you can start making contents that can attract readers and give your blog traffic a boost. If your blog traffic is high you can start making money by putting advertisements or selling your stuff right from your blog.
In this article, I will tell you the top 10 tips on how to monetize a blog and get real money online.
Before you get started to make your first $100 with your blog, there are few things that need to be prepared beforehand. Here are the prerequisites you should do:
1. Your blog should be self-hosted
The first thing to do before launching your blog is to make sure that you don’t use a free blogging platform to build your blog.
There are so many free blog platforms out there such as Blogger, WordPress Free Blog, Wix, and more.
The difference between self-hosted blog and free blog platforms lies on the features and controls.
You can’t control your blog freely if you use free blogging platforms like Free WordPress and Blogger.
You can’t put space for advertisements on a free WordPress blog and the blog admin can remove your contents or even your blog if you violate their terms of service.
Moreover, if you use free blogging platform your website will not as attractive as a self-hosted blog since the URL will be in the format of www.yourname.wordpress.com or www.yourblog.blogspot.com.
That doesn’t look very professional and captivating at all. With a self-hosted blog, you will have absolute control over your website and content.
The URL of your blog will also look good and more professional. E.g.www.yourname.com looks better than www.yourname.freeblogservice.com, right?
2. Purchase a domain name and web hosting
There are so many cheap hosting providers out there that you can purchase on.
Just do a quick web search. For the beginning choose the web hosting plan that is the cheapest of all and choose the domain name that you wish.
A domain name a.k.a. the address of your blog usually is valid for 1 year and you need to pay again to renew the domain lease.
3. Install self hosted WordPress on your hosting
Don’t confuse a free WordPress blog and a self-hosted WordPress blog. The self-hosted WordPress blog gives you more control since you are the one doing the hosting.
You can also add plugins and custom themes and even edit all the things on your WordPress installation. You cannot do this thing using a free WordPress blog.
4. Write contents and focus on your niche
After you are done setting up your self-hosted blog now it’s time to start creating content. The value of your blog depends on the contents of your blog.
The more quality content you post, the more visitors will visit your blog. I recommend you choose one topic or niche for your blog. If you are good at drawing then make contents that focus on drawing.
If you have knowledge in computer and software then post contents about that niche.
The point is, you should only choose one niche and stick with it. Do not have multiple niches for one website as it will rank badly on search engines.
This whole niche thing is described in SEO techniques. SEO is short of search engine optimization.
It is basically about how we can use the right methods to help major search engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc to display your blog on the top ten results of their search engines.
The topic of SEO will not be discussed here as it has its own article.
10 tips to monetize your blog and get real money
At this point I assume that you already have a self-hosted blog and you have written contents on your blog for a while. Now I will tell you the 10 tips to monetize your blog and get real money.
Please bear in mind that making money online is not always easy. These ten ways are just the ways you can do to monetize your blog. You still need to work hard in order to get your first money using these methods.
1. Affiliate Links and Affiliate Marketing
Doing affiliate marketing is by far the easiest way and also the popular way to start making money with your blog. You can do affiliate marketing by finding a service or product that you like to endorse on your website.
There are many affiliate websites on the web. Just register for one and you will be given affiliate links to place on your website. If your visitors click on those links you will receive a commission.
2. Pay Per Click Advertisement
As the name suggests, a PPC is an advertisement service who pays you based on clicks your visitors do on the advertisement that you place on your blog.
The most popular PPC Company is Google Adsense.
3. Rent spaces on your blog for ads
Using Google Adsense is only one of the many ways you can do to make money with your blog.
Another similar way to make money by using a blog is by selling ads space on your blog directly. You can rent ads space in your blog and set the price by yourself.
4. Put donation button on your blog
If you have quality contents on your blog, you can ask your visitors to support you by making a donation. There are many widgets you can use to accomplish this.
5. Use monetization widgets
You can place blog widgets on your blog and earn commission as your visitors see or interact with your widgets.
6. Selling premium contents on your blog
You can sell eBooks or merchandise for your visitors to purchase. Before you can get your visitors to buy your premium content, you need to have stable visitor traffic as well as quality content.
7. Display Pop Up ads on your blog
Pop-up ads can be annoying for your visitors but you can earn money by joining the ads network and place pop-up codes on your website.
When visitors click and open the pop-up windows you will get a commission.
8. Start a coaching or tutoring class
If you are good at something you can give your visitors a tutoring class right on your blog.
Maybe you can give drawing lessons or programming lessons and set a pay rate as you wish. There are good WordPress plugins to help you build tutoring classes.
9. Put audio ads
This thing is pretty new but it becomes more popular. If you want to get income easily you can place audio ads on your blog.
10. Offer writing service
You can make as much as $30 per 500 words for writing articles for individuals or companies.
You can also offer a translation service on your blog if you are fluent in more than one language.
